Minnesota’s rhetorical Molotov-cocktail-throwing congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, will not be returning to the House of Representatives. (Pause for applause.)Bachmann announced, in a rambling 8-minute video posted Tuesday, that she would not seek another term representing Minnesota’s sixth Congressional district.

Bachmann tried to reassure her supporters that she wasn’t bowing out because she was afraid of losing or because of the continuing investigation of her failed presidential campaign by the Office of Congressional Ethics. She said that she came to this decision because, for her, eight years is a logical term limit even though it’s not a legal limit.

Huh. Maybe. Maybe not. But if there’s one thing that Bachmann’s time in Congress has taught me it’s this: Don’t trust anything that comes out of her mouth. I’ll wait for the fact check.

Bachmann had made a place for herself as one of the most divisive, inflammatory, and flat-out dishonorable members of Congress in recent history, and her strong association with the Tea Party (she was the founder of the Tea Party Caucus) has gone a long way toward shaping the group’s image for ill.

Bachmann built her celebrity on being acerbic and excessive, on throwing out accusations that she could not back up, on floating ideas that had no basis in fact. It worked for her, making her a household name and the butt of running jokes.

There seemed to be nothing that she wouldn’t say — and that her supporters wouldn’t applaud her for saying — so long as it was mixed with nationalistic catchphrases like “Constitution,” “founders” and “traditional,” and attacks on the president.

The problem is that much of what she was saying — aside from not making sense — was simply false.

According to PolitiFact, of the 59 statements by Bachmann that the site has checked since 2009, 44 (a whopping 75 percent) were mostly false or worse. A quarter met the criteria for the site’s worst rating: Pants on Fire. Ten percent were deemed half true, seven percent mostly true and only eight percent unambiguously true.

According to The Washington Post fact checker:“Bachmann is not just fast and loose with the facts; she is consistently and unapologetically so. No other lawmaker earned as high a percentage of four-Pinocchio ratings as Bachmann — and she earned an average of more than three Pinocchios as a presidential candidate.”Four Pinocchios is The Post’s worst rating.

The Associated Press has said that it had to put a quota on the number of statements by Bachmann that they would fact check during the presidential race, presumably to conserve resources.

And not all of her falsifying and fearmongering were without real victims.

In 2012 she suggested that Huma Abedin, who was at the time deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, might be working on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate the highest levels of our government.

According to a letter from Bachmann: “Her position provides her with routine access to the Secretary and to policy-making.”This was outrageous, the lowest of low behavior, a witch hunt of the most bitter variety. She was roundly condemned for that accusation, including by her onetime campaign manager, who wrote of the congresswoman on the Fox News Web site:“I am fully aware that she sometimes has difficulty with her facts, but this is downright vicious and reaches the late Senator Joe McCarthy level.”That is Bachmann’s problem: she can be downright vicious and she seems to have little regard for honesty.

In Bachmann’s announcement video she said:“I fully anticipate the mainstream, liberal media to put a detrimental spin on my decision not to seek a fifth term. And since I was first elected to Congress many years ago, they always seem to attempt to find a dishonest way to disparage me.”Spare me! Stop trying to play the victim pre-emptively. Bachmann has used dishonesty to disparage too many of her political foes during her time in Congress. They’re the victims.

Bachmann has set a new standard, found down by the ankles, for the level to which an elected official should aspire. She has willfully bent the truth like a hurricane bends a sapling. This is behavior not becoming of a congresswoman. This has sullied her seat and the institution.

Hopefully, with her stint coming to an end, we will move one step closer to something she seemed to have utter contempt for: the truth.